| Name: | MUTEK FORUM - EXPANDING REALITIES: IMMERSIVE MEDIA AND STORYTELLING |
| City: | Canada, Quebec, Montreal |
| Time: | Wed Aug 20, 2025 @ 9:00am till Wed Aug 20, 2025 @ 6:00pm |
| Location: | Quartier Des Spectacles |
| Description: | Day 1 of MUTEK Forum 2025 explores how technology is reshaping the way we experience narrative. From memory and identity to embodiment and design, this day invites participants to rethink storytelling as an immersive, collaborative, and radical act. Expanding Realities: Immersive Media and Storytelling, presented by the Canada Media Fund (CMF), dives into new narrative forms and methods of worldbuilding across visual, sonic, and technological landscapes.
Kicking off the day, AI provocateurs Dadabots deliver an opening manifesto tying into the Forum's overarching theme. Language artist Sasha Stiles follows with a lecture-performance, presenting a live AI poetry reading that explores the human-machine relationship.
Interdisciplinary artist Jason Voltaire and Argentinian duo Motia take the stage to highlight the storytelling power of live visual design—unpacking how creative rituals and aesthetic decisions shape collective experiences in performance.
In an interactive ‘playformance’, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s What Happens Next is Up to You places the audience at the center of a provocative narrative on censorship and division.
MUTEK and Xn Québec unveil the 2025 edition of the Village Numérique, a unique urban digital art circuit across the Quartier des Spectacles, where cutting-edge technology meets artistic genius, alongside project presentations from a handful of participating studios.
Presentations by new media artist Mélanie O’Bomsawin and founder and creative director of Akoia, Nyambura M. Waruingi, highlight innovative and resilient approaches to cultural storytelling and spatial design.
The talk-show segment What’s Next in Immersive? hosted by Myriam Achard (PHI), features a dynamic lineup exploring the future (and past) of immersive technologies as tools for imagination and engagement. Guests include immersive curator Ana Brzezińska, Marc Barto (V&A), artist Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, and more.
Also featured: a critical talk titled Inversive Exhibitions by renowned artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer; artist Q&As with SIM and Ida Toninato & Pierre-Luc Lecours; a hands-on workshop on scenophony—immersive audio design—led by the SAT; and the AIxVoice masterclass with Harry Yeff (Reeps100) and Bertie Sampson (immersive-me), exploring how AI, visual language, and the human voice converge to shape new forms of expressive, ethically-driven storytelling.
Finally, the day culminates with a public showcase of the MUTEK AI Ecologies Lab—an interdisciplinary residency launched in April 2025 exploring sustainable, socially just, and culturally meaningful approaches to artificial intelligence. Developed in partnership with the SAT, Milieux Institute, Applied AI Institute, and Abundant Intelligences, the lab presents six innovative projects shaped through design sprints, hackathons, and mentorship. Highlights include contributions from Soliphilia, Mila, and La Piscine. MUTEK would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Montreal for their support. This project is funded as part of the Cultural Development Agreement of Montreal established between the City of Montreal and the Government of Quebec. |
|
